Copying machines equipped with sorting, collecting and collating devices are known, and we refer, for example to Stemmle U.S. Pat. No. 3,788,640, of Jan. 29, 1974, and Schulze U.S. Pat. No. 3,774,902, of Nov. 27, 1973. The devices disclosed in those and similar U.S. patents are principally utilized in connection with the operation of fairly large and complicated xerographic copy machines.
A compact sorter more closely related to the device of the present invention, is disclosed in our co-pending application, Ser. No. 98,546 filed Nov. 29, 1979, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,328,963, and in the pending application of Lawrence, Ser. No. 098,191 filed Nov. 27, 1979 now U.S. Pat. No. 4,343,463. The apparatus of the present invention is lightweight, compact, easily adapted for operation with a wide variety of makes and styles of xerographic copiers; and, more importantly, is inexpensive to manufacture.
The device of the present invention is portable and is simple to operate, requires no electrical connection to the copier, and is trouble-free and simple in its construction.
In an art which has grown rapidly in the last two decades, not only is it important to provide a means for producing multiple copies of a single sheet, but also multiple copies of a multiple-page document, and to do so in a manner which compliments the speed of production of the copier so that the collating, sorting, and assembling of the multi-page document does not consume more time than the copying did and so that the collated documents are ready as soon as the last of the pages of the document have been copied.